


With Her Silver Sound

by Ladycat



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-02-13
Packaged: 2018-01-12 05:34:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1182518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladycat/pseuds/Ladycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He sounds thoroughly amused and sleepy, a pillow swallowing half the words before Rodney ever hears them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Her Silver Sound

The blaring of a car horn off in the distance sounds too loud, incongruous and startling enough that Rodney almost tenses out of his half-doze. Beyond it, there’s the steady whoosh and low, grumbling rush of the highway, crowded even at ten thirty in the morning. Birds carol from trees he doesn’t remember being so close to the windows, their branches creating dappled shadows on the covers, leaves rustling whenever the occasional breeze tosses them.

It’s so _noisy_.

He’ll get used to it, he supposes. He must’ve been used to it at some point, because he’d rented this apartment _because_ it’d been so quiet when he visited, like the whole building was covered in cotton, muffling it from the rest of the world.

Six months, a year, three years of Atlantis later, and Rodney knows better.

Downstairs, the refrigerator hums and buzzes, an eerie duet to the steady drip of a faucet that hasn’t stopped leaking since he arrived home. He can fix it, of course. If it goes on much longer, he’s _going_ to fix it and then leave a blistering message for his landlord—called twice already—requesting a percentage of his rent lowered for this month. Rodney is a firm believer that one gets what one pays for and the whole point of an apartment is that Rodney has a _land lord_ to deal with the messy, annoying details of day-to-day living while Rodney spent his physical time in underground buildings, mind soaring with stars he knew that one day, he’d actually get to touch.

Absently, he rubs his hands against the smooth cotton weave of his sheets. The burn is mostly healed but it itches, sometimes.

“Mm.” Fingers wrap solid and comforting around his wrist, knuckles resting on the bed so Rodney’s hand dangles, no longer flat, air cool and useless against skin that’s too pink, too shiny. “Don’ do that.”

Rodney inch-worms across the bed, resting his head against the smooth curve of a shoulder so he can see better. Hands fascinate him. This hand is broad and big, but not big enough compared to the rest of the frame it’s attached to. The fingers are long and almost poetic, especially when clutched around the butt of a gun or the joystick of some kind of vehicle—there’s a sense of peace that settles under knuckles that should be knobbier than they are, under the faint lines of scars Rodney’s kissed and, in a few cases, helped care for. The nails are cut to near nothing, clear over blunt tips that round to calluses Rodney can feel against his skin, rougher and cooler but still warm, still soft, still familiar and perfect.

Rodney’s own hands aren’t longer or graceful, instead lined and almost chubby. They’re broad, stocky fingers to go with his broad, stocky frame—an idea he still has difficulty grasping after being a skinny bean-pole most of his life. He moves his left forefinger, dragging it across skin that’s barely visible under dark strands of hair; he loves to rub it against the grain, just to hear the snorting chuckle that’s always, always made, right before Rodney’s either smacked or tackled, depending on the mood. His hands are nearly hairless in comparison, although the rest of him certainly is not. Rodney is all man, thank you, and he’s never understood the complaints of prior partners, annoyed with just how manly his chest, for example, is. If it’s so offensive, then perhaps one of them—Lisa, all right, Lisa who never, ever shut up about any part of him physically and almost gave him a complex since he _knew_ he was a handsome man and she always insisted on trying to change that—should just go and become the lesbian she always accused him of driving her towards.

He thinks he heard a rumor that she had, actually. No great loss to the male half of the species as far as he’s concerned. Lisa was always a bitch. A hot, intelligent blonde bitch, but still. A bitch.

“Hey. Tickles.”

Rodney chases one particular strand of hair, darker and longer than the others surrounding it, exposing the pale, almost pink skin underneath—it’s hard to tan when one is wearing a pelt, runs the standard half-joke, but Rodney knows there isn’t much of a tan there to begin with. Just a slightly darker, more sallow complexion that ends up looking like white-boy-year-long-tan. But here, on his hands, there’s actual pink for Rodney to chase down, paler, hidden skin to expose, and Rodney knows he’s maybe slightly obsessive about it.

But other than rolled eyes or a few pointed comments, it’s never actively stopped. Rodney’s never sure if he’s humiliated or grateful for that, and has decided it’s probably somewhere between both. 

“I’m not letting you go, you know.” He sounds thoroughly amused and sleepy, a pillow swallowing half the words before Rodney ever hears them. “You’ll just rub all the new skin off. _Again,”_ he adds, aggrieved.

Rodney could whine and pout and say it _itches_ , in that pitch-perfect two year old whine, but he’s feeling too lazy to do more than shift again so that his head is on the pillow, nose a bare inch away from John’s. “Morning.”

Morning kisses have never been a part of Rodney’s life, halitosis being what it is, but when John worms his head forward the necessary inch and a half, Rodney presses his mouth back eagerly.

“You’re up early,” John says after they’ve shared at least half a dozen kisses.

Rodney’s lips feel warm and wet and he wants to lick them.

“And that really tickles.”

What really—oh. Rodney cranes his neck enough to see his own hand, moving independently of his mind, ruffling strands of hair up against the grain before smoothing them back down. He twists out of John’s grip, encircling John’s wrist instead. It’s a delicate wrist, really. John is well put-together, tall with an oddly elongated chest and dense muscles that make him seem a lot bigger and bulkier than he really is. His wrists tell the true story, though: slender enough that Rodney can guess how much John must’ve practiced before competently using the bevy of guns he’s fired, with a grace that lends itself more to academic pursuits. They’re also as hairy as the rest of John’s hands and arms and Rodney rubs his linked fingers back and forth, just to hear John huff a short laugh and mock-try to twist away. “Heyyy,” he whines.

When Rodney looks back, the mid-morning sun shafts through the curtains drawn to block it, catching John’s single visible eye to turn it a deep, gold-touched green. Rodney settles his head back on the pillow and stares, not caring that he’s being dopey and romantic and more than a touch stupid. John’s eyes are fascinating, as fascinating as the rest of him.

Besides. Right now, they’ve got nothing but time to kill, and Rodney can’t think of a better way to do so.

John kisses him again, pushing up so that he’s half over top of Rodney, gripping Rodney’s right hand and holding it up and away from his body. “Don’t rub this,” he instructs, oddly serious despite the hint of a smile around sleep-soft lips. “I’ll secure ’em, if I have to.”

“Kinky,” Rodney says from sheer habit. There’s another quip about rubbing in his head, but he refrains. Outside, there’s a distant screech, a motor roaring into life before fading away. The birds fill in the hush that follows.

Another kiss, this time John finally licking his mouth open, letting just a hint of passion thread through the morning tenderness. This is the only time John _is_ ever tender, playful and oddly shy with only the rising sun to witness it. Rodney finds it just as disconcerting as the first time, but he doesn’t complain. He likes it— _they_ like it, and there’s few enough things they can share without bickering; Rodney doesn’t want this added to that particular list, so he kisses back, relaxing into it.

Settling himself over Rodney, chests and hips and thighs matched up perfectly, John stretches the hand he holds high above Rodney’s head. “I’m thinking hash browns,” he says, apropos of nothing and again earning Rodney’s undying affection. Thick eyebrows waggle at him, laughing the way John rarely lets himself verbalize. Given how ridiculous John's guffawing, clown-like laugh is, it's an acceptable alternative. “And bacon. There should be bacon.”

“We didn’t go grocery shopping.” Twenty-four-hour grocery stores are plentiful, of course, but when it’s not quite two am, sleep and home become the overriding desires. Neither of them had even thought about stocking the apartment, Rodney too busy clutching the ‘oh-shit’ bar—never a more appropriate name—while John forced the car faster and faster, grim-faced under the flashing overhead lights, too caught up in his own angry thoughts to worry about what might come next.

John blinks at him lazily. “Have you ever cooked before?”

“Hey, I can cook breakfast!” he protests, but it’s equally lazy, body still loose and relaxed under John’s solid weight. He should probably complain, but he likes the half-suffocated feeling, rib cage heavy without being crushed, stomach rubbing against John’s with each breath. “Well. I can cook bacon. And scramble eggs.”

“Talented _and_ amazing!” John teases. He’s grinning openly now, something he hardly ever does; light glints off his teeth. “You’re a one-man-machine, Rodney.”

John really never should’ve let Rodney know how much he hates being pinched, especially in the ass, because it’s only his _right_ hand that’s still held up and away from him.

John makes a gratifyingly high squeak of protest. “Son of a bitch!”

“Oh, like you don’t love it,” Rodney says, throat drying to nothing by the last word because neither of them need or want declarations, they don’t have specific words and phrases that lay everything bare on the table. They’re guys; they don’t _do_ words, no matter how words are important and Rodney needs those boundaries, withers and grows even more neurotically crazy without them, because he doesn’t know, he can never guess—

John kisses his nose, his cheeks and his chin, leaving wet smears that grow cool the moment he’s left them. “Yeah,” he says while traffic rumbles down the highway, mouth as crooked as Rodney’s ever gets, his expression chagrined and frustrated and open and honest and held maybe two inches above Rodney’s own. “Yeah, fine, so maybe I do love it.”

There’s a place that delivers breakfast, lunch and dinner. It takes almost an hour for the car to creak and cough its way up the driveway, the buzzer unnaturally loud as a bored driver announces he has their food—bacon, sausage, eggs, hash browns, toast, and the pancakes Rodney shouted into the phone that better be there—and can he be allowed in already? It’s gonna start raining any minute and he wants to be inside his car before it does, thanks.

Rodney’s table is unsteady, one leg shorter than the other, and it clinks every time they shift their elbows or dig too hard with their forks. The sound is arrhythmic, dissonance against the growing shush of a spring rain storm as it darkens the sidewalks and plinks against the windows, but Rodney doesn’t mind. He’s not really paying attention to it, not with John’s ankle warm and hairy tucked against his own, the taste of bacon flaring salty and rich as he crunches through slice after slice.

Thunder rumbles, God bowling above their heads, and Rodney feels perfectly at home.


End file.
